39 Facts About Samuel Gorton

Samuel Gorton was an early settler and civic leader of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and President of the towns of Providence and Warwick.

Samuel Gorton had strong religious beliefs which differed from Puritan theology and was very outspoken, and he became the leader of a small sect known as Gortonians, Gortonists, or Gortonites.

Samuel Gorton settled next in Portsmouth where he met with a similar fate, being whipped for his insubordination towards the magistrates.

Samuel Gorton next went to Providence Plantations where he encountered adverse circumstances, until he and a group of others purchased land from the Narragansett people.

Samuel Gorton refused to answer a summons following the complaints of two Indian sachems about being unfairly treated in a land transaction.

Samuel Gorton was sentenced to prison in Charlestown, though all but three of the presiding magistrates voted to give him the death sentence.

Samuel Gorton became part of the very civil authority which he had previously rejected, serving as an assistant, commissioner, deputy, and president of the two towns of Providence and Warwick.

Samuel Gorton wrote a number of books, two of them while in England and several others following his return.

Samuel Gorton was a man of great learning and great intellectual breadth, and he believed passionately in God, the King, and the individual man; but he was harshly critical of the magistrates and ministers who filled positions that he considered meaningless.

Samuel Gorton was educated by tutors and became an accomplished scholar, particularly in the area of languages and English law.

St Olave was a hotbed of unorthodox religious opinion, and Samuel Gorton soon came to adopt his own, highly eccentric and controversial theology.

Samuel Gorton's belief was that the Holy Spirit was present in all human beings, giving each person a divinity and obscuring any distinction between a saint and sinner.

Samuel Gorton felt that emphasizing external ordinances, as opposed to the inner Spirit, compelled people to live under the ordinances of man rather than of Christ.

Samuel Gorton viewed the ordinances promoted by governments with deep suspicion.

Samuel Gorton sensed the growing hostility towards those with unorthodox theological views, such as Anne Hutchinson, and his stay there was short.

Samuel Gorton soon went to Plymouth Colony where he rented part of a house, becoming active in the community by volunteering during the Pequot War, as did his older brother Thomas.

In court, Samuel Gorton "carried himself so mutinously and seditiously" towards both magistrates and ministers that he was sentenced to find sureties for his good behavior during the remainder of his tenure in Plymouth, and given 14 days to be gone from the colony.

Samuel Gorton refused to allow her to appear and went in her place.

Samuel Gorton was never received as an inhabitant in Providence because of his disorderly course.

The magistrates ordered that Samuel Gorton be confined to Charlestown, to be kept at labor, and to wear bolts or irons in order to prevent his escape.

Samuel Gorton would be sentenced to death, upon a conviction by a jury trial, if he were to break confinement or to maintain any of the "blasphemies or abominable heresies wherewith he hath been charged".

Samuel Gorton remained in England while Holden returned to the American colonies in 1646 and presented the order to the Massachusetts authorities, who found it unacceptable.

Samuel Gorton was now seeing profound changes in thinking concerning toleration, unlike when he left England in 1637.

Samuel Gorton became a highly sought preacher and spent most of his time at Thomas Lamb's church in London's Bell Alley.

Samuel Gorton became actively involved in roles that he had previously criticized, now that his settlement of Warwick was secured by royal decree.

In 1651, Samuel Gorton was chosen as President of the colony, but Coddington had been successful in gaining his commission to put the island towns under his own authority, so Samuel Gorton presided only over the plantations of Providence and Warwick.

In 1652, Smith was selected as president and Samuel Gorton was the assistant from Warwick.

Samuel Gorton was chosen as a commissioner during a majority of the years from 1651 to 1663, and his name appears on a list of Warwick freemen in 1655.

Samuel Gorton was one of several prominent citizens named in Rhode Island's Royal Charter of 1663.

Samuel Gorton last served in a public capacity in 1670 when he was 78 years old.

In 1675, Samuel Gorton had received word that the Indians living in the Connecticut Colony intended to invade the Narragansett country, and later in the same year King Phillips War broke out in the New England colonies.

Samuel Gorton left a comfortable life in England to enjoy liberty of conscience in the English colonies of America.

Samuel Gorton was one of the most remarkable men that ever lived.

Samuel Gorton denied the right of a people to self-government, and contended for his views with the vigor of an unrivalled intellect and the strength of an ungoverned passion.

Samuel Gorton was described as being gentle and sympathetic in private intercourse, and generous and sympathetic in nature.

Samuel Gorton gave to others the same liberty of thought and expression that he claimed for himself.

Samuel Gorton wrote another book while in England entitled An Incorruptible Key composed of the CX.

Samuel Gorton's final published work was Antidote Against Pharisaical Teachers, though he left behind an unpublished manuscript of several hundred pages entitled Exposition upon the Lord's Prayer.

In 1896, Lewis G Janes published Samuel Gorton: a forgotten Founder of our Liberties.